166 LORD SHAFTESBURY

years, but that it should be reconstructed and placed
definitely under the Home Office. He denied that the
Board was the tyrant its enemies described ; just as
there was a Whig party and a Tory party, so in every
town there was a clean party and a dirty party, and if
the dirty party did not want to submit to the clean party,
the Board could not compel it. On the other hand, the
Board's independence was an anomaly, and it was time
to bring it to an end. As to its work, he pointed out
with justice that Local Boards had been set up in nearly
two hundred places at a cost of ^150 or .£200, whereas a
separate Local Act would have cost each of these places

g;,ooo. He refused to enter into personal controversies,
e thought the time might come when no central
authority would be needed; but the report on Newcastle,
whose condition made a civilised man shudder, showed
that such an authority was at present indispensable.

It was hoped that these concessions would disarm the
opposition, but the enemies of the Board wanted more
than Chadwick's head. Lord Seymour, who spoke with
authority because he had been at one time an ex-officio
member of the Board, said that he was in favour of
legislation for the public health, but that the existing
scheme was intolerable ; its effect was to make sanitary
reform hated. The Board's powers were a public danger,
for it was at once a legislative and an executive authority.
He dwelt on its astonishing proposals for taking into its
own hands the water supply and the burial system of
London. He answered Palmerston's quip about the
clean and the dirty party by saying that in practice a
tenth part of a town could govern the rest. An engineer
whom nobody would employ, and a doctor whom no-
body would consult, would put their heads together and
find a few signatories to a petition ; the Board of Health
would send down an inspector equally anxious for
employment, and the rest would follow. Lord Shaftes-
bury was quite entitled to hold his centralising views,
but he ought to preach them in the House of Lords
rather than practise them as an uncontrolled Commis-
sioner. His speech was enlivened by an account of his